Smith College exhibit highlights what and how Americans have read through time

The article accompanying the image says it’s very bad, that women are reading too much.

The Smith College Neilson Library is hosting "A Place of Reading, Three Centuries of Reading in America." The exhibit is curated by Cheryl Harned, a doctoral student in history at UMassâ-Amherst.Republican file by JOHN SUCHOCKI

By ELIZABETH LAFOND COPPEZ

Politics, current events, self-help, daily news and etiquette are topics that Americans have enjoyed reading about for centuries, and some of the materials that brought them such information are on display through May 28 at Smith College in Northampton.

Nestled in the Book Arts Gallery on the third floor of the college’s Neilson Library, “A Place of Reading: Three Centuries of Reading in America,” was curated by Cheryl Harned, a doctoral student in history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

“I think it’s an ultimate testament to my love of reading because that’s what the exhibit is all about,” Harned said of the presentation that has also been praised for highlighting how such materials, easily read either privately or in public spaces, formed and reflected the American character.

As an intern at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Harned created an online exhibition with material from the society called “A Place of Reading.”

After meeting Martin Antonetti, lecturer in art and curator of rare books at Smith, and Nan Wolverton, director of the society’s Center for Historic American Visual Culture who teaches classes in the American studies and art departments at Smith,

Harned was encouraged to turn her digital exhibit into a physical reality with expanded material from the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley.

The exhibit is pieced into different categories, showcasing newspapers and periodicals, personal libraries from early U.S. presidents, and reading in the colonial home, revolutionary taverns, and during the Civil War.

“I’ve made good use of the exhibit.” said Wolverton, who has used it in conjunction with her course, “The History of American Material and Visual Culture.”

“I take my students over to point out certain areas and let them explore and take a close look at what we’ve been talking about in class.”

Wolverton feels the exhibit highlights what the availability of reading material has meant through time as well as the importance of reading.

“The exhibit shows us the incredible impact reading had and the way it’s represented in so many different forms in visual cultures — newspapers, illustrated books and photographs,” she said.

“I hope visitors would think about how they read and where they read. There’s a guest book people can sign and indicate where they love to read.”

Barbara Blumenthal, rare book specialist in Smith’s Mortimer Rare Book Room, is pleased to have the exhibit on view at the college.

“We don’t have things like the Declaration of Independence, big newspaper collections or trade cards from books,” she said. “It’s interesting to see items that were developed around reading and books.”

Smith seniors Erica Zhang, Anjana Rao, Mollie Schwam, and Chloe Collins, who are the first to graduate with the book studies concentration, have created a companion exhibit, in the foyer outside of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, called, “Cultivating the Nobler Part of Her Nature: Books for Women and Girls in Early America.”

Their exhibit showcases what women and girls were reading in America.

“Those books are from our collection and the students wrote labels about them and they went to the Skinner Museum at Mount Holyoke College to select objects to go with it,” Blumenthal added.

Harned particularly likes the image “Novel Reader” on view in a section of her exhibit called “Caught in the Act.” It features a woman at her kitchen table, completely absorbed in her book. A husband and kids are shown behind her, yelling in a house that is in disarray.

“The article accompanying the image says it’s very bad, that women are reading too much,” she said. “I identify with it because the more I study the more I feel like everything else is falling apart.”

Wolverton enjoys the engraving from 1864 called “The Portrait of a Husband.”

“It shows a man reading and leaning back in a chair, just about to tip over. It shows the posture associated with Americans — Americans shown from this period are tilting back in chairs while Europeans are sitting upright and more proper,” Wolverton said.

Wolverton said she is glad such once prevalent reading materials have been preserved.

“They really do tell us about our past,” she said.

Harned said other individuals who assisted her include Jaclyn Donovan Penny, imaging rights coordinator at the American Antiquarian Society, the society’s Georgia “Gigi” Barnhill, and Lauren Hewes, and Marla Miller, her adviser at UMass.